Friday, May 31, 2013

This recent Wired article is fascinating: Mailbox, a tiny, barely-two-and-a-half-year-old company in San Francisco, makes a killer app. A month later, Dropbox drops in $100 million dollars.

Stop for just a moment, and I'll say it again: One Hundred Million Dollars.Holy Toledo! Let's imagine for a moment that Mailbox was a chemical compound, and that the company hired chemists. You've likely heard the old saw of ~$200K / FTE (overhead & chemicals included).Well, ignoring inflation, that up-front moneycould support a staff of 10 chemists for 50 years. Job security? You betcha.

Even more amazing, look down to the fourth bold interview question, about hiring vs. supply/ demand for mobile engineers in the Bay Area. According to CEO Underwood, they cannot find enough bodies to fill the seats; interesting parallels, I'm sure, with Cambridge or Palo Alto for chemists, ca. 1980 or so (Biotech? What the heck is that?). The Dropbox parent site? Currently trying to fill 47 jobs, at a company where all meals are included, 4 weeks' vacation, and dedicated game rooms on-site.
Try selling that to a biotech start-up. Dang.

It's been a while since I've read a book I couldn't put down. Especially one that blends two of my favorite subjects: cooking, and indentured servitude "making your bones" in a tradition-bound hierarchy.

For those unfamiliar with Chef Samuelsson - owner of the Red Rooster in Harlem and former executive chef of Aquavit - his story reads like a modern fairy tale. Adopted from Ethiopia at 5, into a white-collar Swedish home outside Goteborg. Attended a technical school (Mosesson), where he fell in love with culinary arts. As a journeyman chef, he cooked his way through a series of European restaurants (Belle Avenue, Victoria Jungfrau, Elisabethpark, Georges Blanc), some cruise ships, and a long stint in New York City, where he finally decided to land. Along the way, he's taken some turns on TV, first on Top Chef: Masters and recently as a judge on Chopped. He's cooked at a State Dinner for President Obama.

Samuelsson's writing, humble yet descriptive, makes you truly see the food in front of you. You can feel the pain and grind of kitchen life, from cuts, burns, and scrapes to the deeper emotional wounds wrought by oppressive managers and head chefs with attitude. Samuelsson emerges from the book less a 'foodie hero' than a grizzled vet of the restaurant scene.

Of course, the parts I most appreciated paralleled my life as a bench-bound synthetic chemist. Kitchen shifts, like lab work, demand long hours, dedication, and a willingness to learn every facet of the job, from "front of house" to garde manger,herb garden to chef de partie. Chemists, too, find their jobs easier when they make a point of practicing skills to the point of subconscious performance - filleting fish or de-boning duck become as automatic as pulling pipettors or running rotovaps.

I enjoyed the concept of a stage, a tradition between restaurants (p.74):

"To be sent away was the highest honor: It meant that you would be sent off to spend a week, a month, or a season doing a stage, which was an unpaid apprenticeship ...the idea was that you'd either come back, bringing those new techniques and skills you'd picked up with you, or or your boss's kindness would come back to him someday."

(Doesn't this sound like a visiting researcher position, or perhaps a short postdoc?)

Less amusing, though, was the metric for success in moving up the cooking ladder (p. 165):

"Don't draw attention to yourself. I know it sucks, but try to be as small as possible."

"...to get ahead in that culture, you have to completely give yourself up to the place. Your time, your ego, your social life, your relationships, they are all sacrificed. It's a daily dose of humility most Americans find difficult to swallow."

(Uncomfortably close to graduate school, right there).

Finally, Samuelsson does not understate the role luck and failure play in shaping one's career. Multiple random events, albeit tragic ones - car accidents, deaths, missed contacts - propelled him into his current life. As with progress through a long total synthesis, failure too can drive you to seek out new ideas, or at least discard the bad ones fast.

I'd recommend this book to anyone with the dual food / chemistry interest; I think you'll find a lot of familiar territory. A real page-turner.

Who's got the highest total # of published papers among living synthetic chemists?

Criteria: The person runs a group that makes things - sorry, no theorists this round - and works principally in some sub-field of synthetic chemistry (organic, organometallic, inorganic, photochem, med-chem, polymers, etc).

I opened the discussion up on Twitter this morning, and used SciFinder, backed up with [cough] group websites that often need updating [cough].

Here's the list, as of 10:00 CST...

(All counts rounded to nearest 100 for convenience. SciFinder is an imperfect metric, since it includes abstracts and some duplicate entries. Please refer to caveats, below, for more detail.)

If you only publish one paper, but you cure a major disease or invent a top-selling polymer additive, you're doing just fine!

Also, I note that not everyone agrees that folks on this list belong in the "synthetic chemist" bucket - see ScienceGeist's (noted) exceptions here. (Update: P-O. Norrby noted another exception...)

Importantly, graduate students shouldn't feel down and out about this list. You can have a perfectly fine career with just a handful of papers; these superstars are the exception rather than the rule.

Curious thought: Publications in large synthetic groups certainly seem to follow a power law** - it takes ~15 years to get those first 100 papers, then about 8 for 100 more, and then the pace picks up dramatically. Presumably, this represents added hands and minds, along with building respect and excitement for one's work. I don't know how many other factors (prizes, location, grants, "buzz") are involved, but they probably belong to another post.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Remember 2009, when you gasped for a moment at the beautiful IBM structure of pentacene?

Credit: BBC News | IBM | Science

In 2012, just in time for the 2012 London Olympics, the same team helped to image "olympicene."

Credit: BBC | IBM

And now, just 5 months into 2013, a team of researchers from UC-Berkeley / LBNL and several physics institutes in Spain have watched cyclizations occur on silver surfaces, using AFM tips to detect the ghostly products in stunning resolution:

Credit: Science | LBNL | UC-Berkeley | Wired

HOLY. COW.

As if this couldn't sound any more amazing, the researchers were able to predict and visualize several products previously predicted by theory, but never directly observed (stabilized diradicals, anyone?).

So, will this be a standard technique for the practicing chemist? I'm guessing not for quite a few years, since the hardware involved still isn't commonplace, and the technique probably works best at prohibitively high dilutions with flat molecules. Med chem? Sure, you could watch a Suzuki coupling occur, or watch a Cope rearrangement, but for "3D" molecules (read: alkaloids, vitamins, sugars, etc...) I think NMR and X-ray crystallography will still be your best bets.

But to paraphrase the futurists, predictions ironically suffer from poor foresight - after all, just over a month ago, a Japanese group disclosed how to take on-demand crystal structures of just about anything. So, I'm sure someone will invent a "rugged" surface capable of guiding the AFM tip around points and curves to monitor, say, real-time Pictet-Spengler reactions. Can't wait!

Sunday, May 26, 2013

(This post was written as part of the BRSM Blog Party. For more worldly wisdom, check out Jess's entry, Stu's, Vittorio's, and Freda's...)
There once was a chap from the UK,
Who wanted to study in Ussay.
He said "I know what,
I'll get scuttlebutt,
And figure out how to be OK."

His mates on thine Twitter doth proclaim,
That the Yankee chem kids are most profane.
They 'colour' incorrectly,
Forget 'football' and 'high tea,'
Those Yanks just love coffee and ballgames.

Dollars - not pounds - will buy groceries,
Pounds - and not stone - for the weights, please.
In lab, we know grams,
Kilos and drams,
But don't order 'litres' of gas, geez!

Driving's best done on the right,
Try not to run the red lights.
I'd recommend bussing,
But I'm not quite trusting,
No double-deckers in sight.

Friday, May 10, 2013

We scientists aren't always the most talkative types, but you'd think we could eke out some volume when it counts, right?

Wrong. I can't tell you how often I've cupped my hand to my ear, leaned so far forward I'm nearly doubled over, and all I get are vague "Charlie Brown's teacher" noises directed at the seminar speaker.

Thoughts race through my head: "Was that my question? Will the speaker repeat it? Don't we have a microphone around???"
Well, let's try to set some ground rules to follow before the next occurrence.

Physiology - Ever take voice or speech classes? There's some easy steps to take to project your voice:

1. Prepare. Don't fumble for words or go 'round in logical circles. One of my colleagues writes his question down on paper before he asks, and then reads from the script. Try it.

2. Breathe. Before you speak, take a deep breath, filling bottom-to-top (diaphragm to chest). Your air supply governs your voice, so fill up!

3. Open up. Your soft palate, the tissue near the back and top of your mouth, needs to be open to allow your voice to resonate in your nasal cavities. One trick to accessing this space? Pretend to yawn, but stop yourself before you do. Feel that heightened, awake moment? That's the soft palate moving, permitting increased air flow.

4. Speak. Use full sentences, and make sure you're communicating the central point of your question. The goal is for the speaker - and the audience - to hear and understand what you're asking. Pause as necessary, using measured spaces between words to drive home important points.

Etiquette - Never just shout out your question, or attempt to cut someone else off while asking theirs.

It's not necessary to overly praise the speaker for his unbelievable oh-my-gosh best talk I've ever heard in my life so thoughtful and well-arranged, etc, etc. The speaker knows they're competent, or they wouldn't be at the front of the room, lecturing...

It's also unnecessary to show your wittiness and intellect by recounting your personal lab highlights, or how much literature you've read on the topic. It's the speaker's moment, not yours.

Always use common courtesy: "Please," "Thank You," "You're Welcome," "Professor," "Dr," "Sir," "Miss / Madame," "Excuse Me," "May I." A few gracious words in the right circumstance could catch the eye of a future collaborator or postdoc advisor.

All else fails? Ask the speaker after the talk, when you can get them one-on-one.Readers: Have more tips for our seminar questioners? Talk to me in the comments!

Perhaps this little tidbit from ScienceInsider got lost in the shuffle yesterday:

Looks like Washington wants a Science Laureate, a travelling scientist "national spokesman for science" to rove about the country drumming up support and excitement. From Sen. Hirono's (HI) office:

"This new honorary position would be appointed by the President from nominees recommended by the National Academy of Sciences and serve for a term of 1-2 years. Using this national platform, the Science Laureate would be empowered to speak to Americans on the importance of science broadly and scientific issues of the day..."

"So, should we rock-paper-scissors for it, then?"Credit: Solar San Antonio | Hayden Planetarium

“...Establishing honorary U.S. Science Laureates would send a clear message to young people about the value of science and technology in our society, and the importance of scientific research to both economic progress and our quality of life,” said Alan I. Leshner Chief Executive Officer of the AAAS and Executive Publisher of Science."

OK, I'm all in favor of increasing exposure and public awareness of science, even if most of the politicians quoted in the article keep beating the STEM STEM STEM horse to death.
So, what does this gig pay, anyway?

"Like the Poet Laureate, the Science Laureate would be an unpaid, honorary post. The scientist would also be encouraged to continue their important scientific work."

Tough break. Guess you'd be expected to write those R01's on the road, then.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

"There's a global shortage of refined helium, and it could get worse if the [U.S.] government doesn't stay in the business of selling helium. To understand how we got here, we need to go back to nearly a century ago to World War I. Germany started building huge inflatable aircraft, and to keep up, the U.S. started stockpiling helium. That federal helium reserve is located outside Amarillo, Texas. [snip]

Hope you can hold off on that overnight 13CSource: Bruker

. . .there are now 10 billion cubic feet of the gas stored in this federal reservoir — enough to fill about 50,000 Goodyear blimps. And it's all kept under a wide-open prairie dotted with coyotes and jack rabbits."

Hang on, let me catch up here. Federal Helium Program? Strategic reserve? I mean, I've heard about the shortage (SciAm, Science, Marketplace), but I didn't realize the situation had grown so dire. (On a micro-econ level, I had noticed that the Airgas truck doesn't stop by to refill the NMRs quite so often, and hourly billing rates are climbing...)Most of the articles indicate private refineries and exploration firms will bear the supply brunt if Congress doesn't act. Perhaps #chemjobs' future isn't in fracking after all - ever thought about 'helium hunting?' Failing that, maybe you could "catch a falling star" and then list it on eBay.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Did you hear about the Florida teen expelled from school for her unsupervised chemical forays?

Tragic.

Reading Ash and DNLee's posts over at SciAm made me furious, too. So, I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane, recounting all the stupid (but important!) things I tried in science labs, Kindergarten through College.

Disclaimer: Don't try these on school grounds. Given today's educational climate, you'd likely be in serious trouble for any of these activities.

See Arr Oh

Who is this masked chemist?

Finding my way through new challenges.
I was a founding blogger at Scientific American's Food Matters and Blog Syn. I once wrote for C&EN's The Haystack. I've written for Nature Chemistry, Newscripts, Chemistry Blog, Chemjobber, and Totally Synthetic.